Taking a Tour

Dad's (thankfully) doing good so today, shortly after my brother arrived, we took a short tour of town. And I'm still at a loss for words, but given that persistance is my middle name, I'll give it a shot.

I'm going to steal my brother's words (because he won't read this) and say that probably part of the issue is that while TECHNICALLY it is spring, spring has not yet arrived at this latitude. This could be part of my problem in perusing my home town....I'm seeing the last vestiges of winter contribute to the depressing landscape. Would it look different if the leaves were on the trees and there were flowers blooming? Maybe. Or maybe I'm seeing the town as having lost 1/3 of its prosperity when the base closed 15 years ago and this is one of the effects. We toured the base and that was equally depressing. The "new" house we lived in 30 years ago...completely razed. Heck the road we lived on was gone. Oddly enough, we found the first house we lived in on base...or we found where it should have been. It was a small court and it too had been completely razed (although, we did get to see where it was). For anyone who has been on a base, you know that base housing is alot like poorly made townhouses...packed tightly together. What I found odd was that they razed the houses but for some reason kept the garages standing. So, there were LOTS of garages, just garages,just standing...with nothing else in the vacinity.

We toured downtown and found all the bars we went to as teens (yes, I've dated myself...when I was a late teen, the drinking age WAS 18) still standing. The second hand book store, still there. But most of the businesses I recalled, gone.

I keep thinking I'm some kind of snob. That I am trying to look at a town that has undergone its own metamorphosis through the eyes of my 40 something year old self and my brain is seeing what it used to be and wondering, how did this happen? The town ages, I do not.